Hispanic Leadership Group Kicks Off 10 City Tour

LOS ANGELES - The Center for Hispanic Leadership (CHL) has announced that Florida International University (FIU) will kick-off CHL's Ten (10) City Hispanic Leadership Tour on March 16 - 18, 2011. The tour's mission is to educate Corporations on how to gain a global competitive advantage by allowing their Hispanic Talent to activate their natural characteristics that make them great leaders to propel workplace innovation and spearhead marketplace growth & expansion.

CHL Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Glenn Llopis is leading this Hispanic advancement initiative. "Hispanics can play a critical role in corporate growth and expansion initiatives, but the challenge is that most Corporations haven't learned how to manage and develop their Hispanic leaders," says Llopis. Mr. Llopis will visit (10) of the leading Hispanic workplace communities in America to listen, learn, train and help accelerate the impact and influence of Hispanic Leadership in the workplace. This effort will be executed in conjunction with CHL's University partners that seek to make a difference in advancing this time critical Hispanic Leadership initiative.

According to Joyce Elam, Executive Dean College of Business Administration at Florida International University, “we are fortunate to have a large and diverse Hispanic student population and a long history of building relationships with corporations that recognize the strengths that these talented and hardworking individuals bring to the workplace. Here at the crossroads of The Americas, we are proud to sponsor the Center for Hispanic Leadership Tour.”

America's Corporations face a Hispanic Leadership crisis and the facts speak for themselves. First, Hispanics overwhelmingly assimilate in the workplace and thus are not given the opportunity to be their natural selves to propel new types of innovations. Second, Hispanics represents the fastest growing workplace population, with dynamic growth and purchasing power - estimated at $1.3 trillion by 2014. Yet, there are not enough Hispanic Senior Leaders spearheading initiatives to capture this growth potential. Finally, research indicates that there remains a crucial gap in addressing the needs of Hispanic leaders on the national stage. According to a recent Pew Hispanic Center survey, 74% of Latinos polled said they either didn't know of a national Hispanic leader or thought there wasn't one.

The Tour is targeting corporations to get actively involved in the Hispanic Leadership conversation via keynote and roundtables discussions, day 1 and training for their Hispanic Professionals, day 2-3. "The post 2008 global economy and changes in the C-Suite are telling us that multicultural leadership is the new normal across multiple levels of business and society engagement, continues Llopis. While Hispanics are reshaping the footprint of America - there is still a valuable Hispanic Leadership gap in America's Corporations. We believe this Tour and the influence of our University partners, like Florida International University, will create the awareness, and required action by Corporations that has been long overdue," concludes, Llopis.

About The Center for Hispanic Leadership

The Center for Hispanic Leadership is a Southern California-based organization that provides talent development, workplace innovation and marketplace expansion programs to Fortune 500 corporations to support the advancement of Hispanic professionals. The Center was founded by Mr. Glenn Llopis, a former corporate executive; author of Earning Serendipity: 4 Skills for Creating and Sustaining Good Fortune in Your Work and The Six Reasons Why Hispanic Leadership Will Save America's Corporations; and contributing leadership writer to Forbes and AOL Latino.

With a student body that reflects the diverse, multicultural character of South Florida, Florida International University has been a leader in graduating minority students at all levels and in all fields of study. It awards more bachelor's and graduate degrees to Hispanic-American students than any other North American university. FIU graduates—of whom there are more than 113,000 and of whom more than three-fourths continue to live and work in South Florida—are eagerly sought out by corporate employers because of their dedicated work ethic and their ability to function successfully in a multilingual and multicultural work environment.
FIU's College of Business Administration, South Florida's leading business school with unique expertise in international business, entrepreneurship and a broad range of financial services, is the largest of the university's professional schools. Among the college's nearly 35,000 alumni are some of South Florida's most successful business leaders and entrepreneurs. More than 6,000 students are enrolled in undergraduate business courses in its Landon Undergraduate School of Business and more than 1,500 graduate students study in its Chapman Graduate School of Business every year. Another 1,000 business professionals participate annually in one or more of its professional and executive education programs.